I don’t know how the young guns at work find all this stuff on YouTube, but there is some mad stuff on there, including this clip of Benitez The Magician.
If only it were true! Gonna need something special to beat the Arse this weekend!
Last week GastroGrrl and I went to see Control; a film we’ve been waiting to see for a long, long time as it was filmed on our street.
The Guardian has declared Control to be film of the year. That’s a big call, and I guess I can’t be objective, as I spent most of my time looking for shots of Macclesfield. That said, the film really is very good, and I can see Anton Corbijn winning best new Director, or Sam Riley winning best new actor in some film awards.
Go and see it, if only to see Macclesfield in all it’s industrial, northern, working-class glory. I’m not sure why Corbijn chose to use Ian Curtis’ real home and work-place for filming, but for all those Joy Division/Ian Curtis groupies who want to know exactly where it was located, here’s a Google Maps link to his old house.
Another World Cup - another defeat to Australia at the hands of a determined English team. Predictably, the build up to the game was full of the usual hype, most notably by the Australian Rugby Union boss John O’Neill stating that all Australian sports fans hate England.
I’m no rugby expert, but from what I saw, England went into the game with a plan to stifle the opponent - a perfectly sensible game-plan when facing such a quick Australian side. And the plan paid off. The Australian pack was no match for the strength of the English front row.
The Wallabies were beaten not wholly by skills on field (the English team still has a long way to go in this respect), but also by tactical decisions.
The Sydney Morning Herald takes a different stance. They don’t seem to recognise that any element of strategy was involved in England’s win, stating that:
Australia ended their worst World Cup campaign by losing to a substandard England
and going on to say that:
Losing a World Cup final is forgivable. Being defeated in a quarter-final by B-grade opponents isn’t.
Such bad losers! If England are a sub-standard B-team, what does that make the Wallabies?
I think that The Guardian makes a valid point in it’s analysis, noting that neither the Wallabies nor the All Blacks play in knock-out competitions outside of the world cup.
There is a big difference between playing in group/league competitions and playing in knockout tournaments. Just ask any Liverpool fan!
This weekend, to celebrate 50 years since Sputnik was launched, Jodrell Bank is turning it’s dish into the world’s biggest cinema screen. Sadly tickets sold out so our plans for a moonlight movie have been dashed. I’m half-tempted to watch from a distance. I mean you can see the flippin’ thing from miles away.
Last week GastroGrrl and I discovered the most bizarre vegetable we have ever come across, and soon found ourselves making a impulsive purchase without even knowing the name for our produce.
We know now the official name for this fractal food - Romanesco broccoli.
It tastes like cauliflower, looks like broccoli and is an amazing example of fractal forms in nature.
